


A Study In Kota Singer

by CrackshipS



Category: The Selection Series - Kiera Cass
Genre: F/M, Trans Character, id i like ocs, im an asshole sympathizer, implied sexual situations, its leah, this was written last year and put on tumblr id thought id put it here too, trans OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 11:33:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18093503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrackshipS/pseuds/CrackshipS
Summary: Kota Singer between The One and The Heir.





	A Study In Kota Singer

Kota remembers how America used to make fun of the royals with him whenever they watched the Report. They were never close but it was always a strange sort of bonding ritual they’d share whenever Kenna was out with friends or on one of her dates with James. They’d turn on the TV and America would blow raspberries at Queen Amberley while he’d say things King Clarkson would never say in the worst King Clarkson voice he could come up with. By the end of it he’d have his sister on the floor laughing so hard her face was the same color as her hair. He remembered the proud feeling he’d get, knowing he made that happen.

The laugh she gives him at her wedding is far from the one he remembers back when they lived in that small house in Carolina. It’s polite and everything you’d expect from a new queen. She’s still America, only polished and he’s aggravated by it. 

Why does she get to pretend she’s perfect, he wants to ask. Why does she get to be successful, to work towards something, and yet when he does he’s ‘selfish’. 

He makes another joke and watches as America gives him another tight lipped smile.

————-

His designs become nationally famous after the royal wedding. He has a waiting list of clients long enough to stretch from his loft to the palace, and they all manage to bring up his sister in some way or another. He spends his days and nights in his workshop, now a large building full of assistants who’ll follow his every word rather than a small garage covered in dust and dirt. 

America may not be fond of him but her fame has given him a boost in most social circles. They still don’t talk.

He saves the most of the money, even if there are no castes to buy his way up, and uses the rest of it to pay for everyday items. 

Kenna still comes to visit him, she never brings James. It’s always been easier talking to her but there’s still tension. He knows she still hasn’t forgiven him for not being there for Astra’s birth. They try to ignore it.

“It’s awfully…disconnected up here,” she mentions one day, staring out the glass walls of his apartment. It’s more like a penthouse, on one of the higher floors of a hotel. He’s always been a city dweller, even if the rest of his family has moved to the beaches of Angeles.

“It’s easier to work in silence,” he replies.

“When was the last time you went out to see a movie? Or did something with someone? Maybe with a group of friends?”

Kota looks up from his sketchbook. It's his way of working even when he isn’t on the clock. “I’m not very good with people.”

“That’s okay,” Kenna smiles. And for some reason he believes her.

————-

Ramesh, one of his assistants, always leaves with Ursula, Denver, and Eleanor in tow, around six at night. Kota stays in his office. They’ll ask him for the okay and then they’re off, leaving him alone for the night. They’re all in their late teens, not too far from his early twenties but just enough that he only ever asks them where they’re going but never if he can come. He’s not good with people.

They always go strange bars, Richie and Veda’s, The Back Alley Lounge, The Goatee, and that one restaurant, The Pink Flamingo. He’d have gone to the last one on his own, but when Ramesh peeks through the door of his office and smiles in the way one would smile at a boss they know almost nothing about, Kota remembers Kenna.

“Can I come,“ he asks.

Ramesh’s eyebrows rise so high Kota is surprised they’re still on his head. After a pause he replies. “Sure, I’ll just tell everyone.”

Ursula laughs, Denver smiles awkwardly, and Eleanor tells him to follow their car. He’s more than relieved when they pull up to The Pink Flamingo, even if his skin still feels a little too tight. But they grab a booth and Kota decides he really doesn’t have anything better to do than spend the night with the strangers he sees every day. 

He almost feels stupid for not knowing that two of his own employees are married. He’s got to admit Denver and Eleanor make a good pair considering how they both manage to make the dinner far less awkward than he expected. They, along with Ursula and Ramesh, even make a point to avoid talking about his sister. Even if he respects them he never thought he’d actually like them. 

He finds himself watching the group dynamic, not exactly fitting in but not being an outsider all together. In some strange way, it’s nice.

And then Lakshmi, Ramesh’s twin sister, scoots into the booth right next to him. She flashes him a smile after their knees bump into each other under the table. When she offers him her hand and says, “Call me Leah,” Kota feels his stomach tighten in the most beautiful way possible. 

She tells him she’s a waitress, and a voice in the back of his head chants ‘Six Six Six Six Six,’ but when she laughs at his bad jokes, he manages to tune the voice out.  
The castes have been abolished for what seems like years. It shouldn’t matter.

————-

“No offense, man, but we were kind of scared of you.” Ursula says. “I never thought you’d hang with us.”

Ramesh laughs and Eleanor covers her face in an attempt to hide her embarrassment on her friend’s behalf. Leah rolls her eyes and shoots him an empathetic look. “That’s just how Ursula compliments people,” she clarifies. He laughs even though he doesn’t find it funny. 

They’re able to shift the conversation from him being the scary boss who isn’t nearly as scary anymore to poking fun of each other. He likes this better.

“Remember that one time Ramesh and Denver tried to start a band? They called themselves The Mighty Mice,” Leah laughs. 

Denver scoffs, drawing a snicker from Ursula. “Hey, we were pretty decent.”

“You didn’t have any instruments, Den.” Eleanor points out.

“You still though I was good. Didn’t you, babe?”

“Okay, okay, we’ve seen enough of that to last us a lifetime,” Ursula interjects. She waves her hand and Eleanor pulls Denver into a kiss for good measure. Kota looks down at the table. 

“What about when you made me sneak you into the first showing of that crappy blue superhero movie thing while I was working at the movie theater.” Ramesh says accusingly at Leah. He turns to Kota. “She made me get up at seven during the summer so I could unlock the back door for her.”

“It’s not my fault you couldn’t understand the lengths a person should go to for the finer cinema.” She replies, unaffected. She rests her elbow in Kota’s shoulder and he can feel his his entire body suddenly begin to heat up. He wonders if she can also feel it.

“I’ve never seen it,” he pipes in.

“Wait a second. You’ve really never seen Blue Bullet?! Dude, it’s like the superhero movie of the century!” 

“I’m not really a movie person,” he replies, smiling.

“You should come and see one with us sometime.”

————-

They’ve only been seeing each other for four months when the twins are born. He goes to Angeles to see his sister. Leah comes with him. Reporters ambush them on their way to the palace, but he stops talking after Leah leaves his side to hide in a nearby store. “I don’t like cameras in my face,” she tells him. 

“It isn’t that you don’t want to be seen with me, right,” he jokes. It’s not as funny out loud as it was in his head, he realizes. 

Judging by her strained laughter, she realizes it too.

————-

When Magda sees them, their hands intertwined, Kota can tell she hesitates before hugging them both. She scolds Kota for not telling her about his ‘absolutely beautiful girlfriend-I mean, Darling, your hair is gorgeous’.

He can feel his jaw tense when May refuses to talk to him, and his mood only gets worse when Gerad actively hides from him. Leah offers him concerned eyes but she doesn’t ask.

They go home early.

————-

“It’s just, I didn’t know you had that in you,” Leah explains. They haven’t made any attempt to talk since the plane ride, not until after they go back to his place and he asks her to spend the night.

Kota stays quiet. He doesn’t want to talk about it.

He’d fought with America again. He didn’t want to. He doesn’t remember what it was about or what he said. He remembers the look on Leah’s face afterwards. She was surprised. Almost disappointed.

“I didn’t know you were so distant with…them,” she continues when he doesn’t reply. 

“She hates me.”

“I don’t think she hates you, Kota.”

“No, Leah, she does. She hates me, and it’s because I worked to get where I am, that’s what it is.” His hands fly up to his hair and he pulls, convinced the pain will serve as a sufficient distraction. It isn’t. “She hates me because all she had to do was smile to get a prince while I had to climb my way to where I am now. If I’d just given them everything I earned I would’ve been nothing, Leah. I’d probably just be living off of her, like the rest of them are.” He wraps his arms around himself then, almost like he’s physically trying to hold his laughter in. It’s hard not to laugh because it really is hilarious how desperate they all are. “ I wouldn’t be an artist, I’d be the nobody brother of the queen. I’m self made and they hate me for it, Leah, and it’s shitty, it’s so shitty.”

His throat is too tight and his eyes burn, and he doesn’t know how to react when she wraps her arms around his waist from behind and pulls him towards her, pressing kisses into his spine.

————-

They ended up in a badly photoshopped magazine. Leah brings it over during one of their dates and Kota can already hear her laughing before he opens the door.

“Apparently I’m pregnant.” She says over a glass of wine. They both know that’s not even possible.

Kota smiles, sitting down on the sofa next to her. He takes the magazine and, after a little play fight ending in his favor, throws it to the floor. He takes her free hand, brings it up to his face and presses a kiss to her knuckles. She simply rolls her eyes and continues holding onto him while the second Blue Bullet movie plays on the TV. 

He wonders what her hand would look like with a silver ring.

————-

“I want to marry you,” Leah says one day. Kota’s lying in bed with her, under blankets big enough to suffocate both of them, while it snows outside. He’s so used to December being the month where he shuts off, isolates himself from everyone-especially his family-but right now he can’t think of any where or any time he’d rather be.

“I want to marry you, too.” He responds and he swears she has stars in her eyes 

Before he can even process it she’s already whispering. “Let’s get married.”

Kota runs a hand through her hair, smiling more and more every time she laughs, he makes her laugh, and kisses his fiancée with every part of his being. 

“I love you, Lakshmi.”

“Shut up and take your clothes off.”

————-

“You should invite some childhood friends,” she says that same night. They’re still in his bed, just sweatier and happier. 

“What?”

“Invite some people from Carolina. Not just your family. And you’ve got to make my brother one of your groomsmen. Maybe Denver, too.”

“Excuse me?”

“For the wedding.”

“We’re having a wedding?” 

Leah sighs. She curls her hand around the back of his neck and kisses him, quick and soft. “We are having a wedding. Okay?” She tilts her head and he knows she’s waiting for an answer.

“Okay.” 

“It’ll be fun.” She says it like it’s a promise. He just hopes it’s one she can keep.

————-

Aspen comes, just as a guest, and Kota has to hold Leah back from hugging him too tightly at the reception. It’s been forever since they spent time together—or even considered each other as friends for that matter—but there’s something about seeing him again that makes Kota wish things were as easy as they were back when everything seemed smaller.

“You okay,” Leah asks after the Legers leave. 

“I’m okay,” he responds. And he is.

His family isn’t nearly as discreet as Aspen’s, Leah’s, or even their friends from work. His mother cries as soon as they see her, and gives Leah a bone crushing hug. She’s cups Leah’s face in her hands and laughs a “Thank you.” before kissing her new daughter-in-law’s cheeks.

“Congratulations.” Kenna smiles towards Kota. “You look amazing.” Astra raises her hands to reach for him from where she sits on her mother’s knee and Kota smiles, giving her one of his hands. 

“She’s right.”

America sits across from Kenna with her husband, the king, at her side holding her youngest, a small brunet prince. “You look happy.”

She offers Kota a tired smile and he takes it.


End file.
